In this wacky new age, there's an internet guy who can tell you anything. Where to get the best Burmese tea salad. Why you're an idiot if you don't invest in skeevy private income schemes. How to fit a beehive into your boss's cigar box.

But sometimes there's a real-life guy who can give you good tips on how to do things, like investing in low-priced stocks. In this particular case, it's Joel Tillinghast, manager of Fidelity Low-Priced Stock fund. The $35 billion fund has averaged a 7.8% average annual gain the past five years, beating 87% of its peers, according to Morningstar.

First of all, when we say low-priced, we're not talking about penny stocks, which are not only low-priced, but thinly traded and promoted by evil people. Con artists can easily push up the price for a few hundred bucks -- $1,000 will buy 100,000 shares – and lure investors with a nice-looking, sharply rising stock chart.

But there's a world of difference between low-priced stocks and penny stocks. Low-priced stocks are legitimate companies whose price has fallen below $15. These are not companies like Ralph's Alchemy & Antimatter. In the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index, for example, 29 stocks sell for less than $15, including Corning, Xerox, Boston Scientific and Southwest Airlines. In the more inclusive Russell 3000 index, 909 stocks trade below $15.

Because the fund has grown so large, Fidelity Low-Priced Stock has set the upper limit at $35 a share. That's the limit for buying stocks: If Tillinghast buys a stock for $20 and it floats up to $36, he doesn't have to sell it. Doing so is like weeding out the flowers from your garden, Tillinghast says, using a metaphor that star manager Peter Lynch was fond of. "If you have a great growth company that keeps growing, why sell it?"

Why low-priced stocks? A low price is a sign that investors are neglecting them -- sometimes justifiably, but other times less so. Tillinghast points to two reasons for neglect: Hot controversies and cold controversies.

A cold controversy is something that has been going on so long that no one talks about it any more. Case in point: Japanese small-company stocks, until a few months ago. "People would say, 'Oh, Japan, the market is a third of what it was 20 years ago, the population is declining, exports are going to be destroyed by China, South Korea and Taiwan,' " Tillinghast says.

But cold controversies can be wonderful things, because you could find small Japanese companies with good management growing earnings -- and low prices, compared with earnings. "Retail investors didn't care because the market had been so lousy for so long," Tillinghast says. "They said, 'We want something hot. We want the China growth story.' "

Hot controversies are more recent, such as the argument that big-box stores are dinosaurs because of Amazon. "Large-cap stocks tend to be hot controversy stocks," Tillinghast says. "People never change their minds until the facts change."

What should you look for in a low-priced stock? Tillinghast has five criteria:

• Honest and trustworthy management. Do they do the right thing with their capital, or do they skim off too much of their profits for themselves?

• Low debt. Troubled companies have a difficult enough time without having to overcome big debt payments.

• Unique skills. "I don't like commoditized businesses," Tillinghast says. "If there are 25 airlines, and they can all fly from Boston to Chicago, and they're all going to get the same fare, that doesn't appeal to me," he says. "I like companies that can do something their competitors can't or won't do."

• Understandable lines of business. "My dad's a biology professor, and I think he's a little disappointed that I don't do biotech companies," Tillinghast says. But figuring out which companies will get Food and Drug Administration approval for their products is just too tough. "It's brutal," he says.

• Low prices, relative to earnings. Tillinghast likes stocks that sell for the same price-to-earnings ratio as the overall market, or less. Sometimes he looks at normal earnings in periods when the industry is particularly depressed. The coal industry, for example, looks expensive because coal prices are low, and earnings are low, too. "A lot of coal-industry stocks are low-priced stocks, and some are buys and some are terrifying to me," he says.

Tillinghast typically will settle for four out of five criteria -- for example, a company with high debt may be acceptable if it has a good brand and powerful cash generation, he says. But he won't take a cyclical stock with a lot of debt and bad cash generation. It will run into trouble when the economy turns down, he says.

Low-priced stocks have another charm that Tillinghast doesn't have to worry about: They're easier for small investors to buy. You may love Warren Buffett, but one share of Berkshire Hathaway costs $169,326. Even the low-cost B shares of Berkshire cost $113. For the cost of 10 shares of Berkshire's B shares, you could buy plenty of low-priced stocks.

Clearly, dabbling in individual stocks is a matter to be settled with you, your bank account, and your risk tolerance. If you do decide to look at low-priced stocks, Tillinghast sets forth some pretty good rules -- and certainly better than some guy in the comments section of the internet.